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" E VEN San Simeon was not large enough to contain Hearst's restlessness Almost every winter, he travelled East to spend several weeks in New York; during their tours of Europe, in the sum- mer, he and Marion stayed in a twelfth-century castle in Wales that he had bought in 1925. And there were al- ways business trips to Mex- ico to inspect his million-acre ranch at Babicora; to ChI- cago, Boston, and Atlanta to consult with his editors and publishers; and to Washing- ton to visit whoever was in the White House at the time. Nothing, however, en- gaged Hearst's interest more than a new building project. When, in the mid-thirties, work was finally completed on the major buildings at San Simeon, he asked Julia Morgan to design him an- other retreat-this one in Northern California, in a nearly primeval forest, fifty miles south of the Oregon border. There, he and Morgan built a mock- Bavarian village called Wyntoon. In its own way, it was as extravagant as his Spanish-baroque castle to the south. San Simeon remained a work in progress. Nothing was allowed to stay as it was. The terraces and pathways were enlarged on a regular basis; the outdoor Neptune Pool was redesigned and rebuilt in three different versions over a twelve-year period; the roof of Casa Grande was raised in 1927 and again in 1931, to provide more space for the upper suites. Hearst devoted nearly as much energy to caring for his flower beds as he did to laying out his front pages. He studied seed catalogues, visited important flower shows, was a regular visitor to the local nurseries, and was an avid reader of books about Re- naissance gardens. "We would propa- gate hom five hundred thousand to seven hundred thousand annuals per year," Norman Rotanzi, one of his head gar- deners, recalled "There was a complete change in the gardens at every season." ';-'. :- -::- . ::: . .-:'.: . .:: .:- . .... >>:( .. :=-;:=: . ". .:. .;. ::t ::::. . : :=: . -=: . >>:= ..::" n.":- - l .: -m .. .:;":- ::. : (:. : m .'; fiJ :" ' -) .:: . u' ..,. , a." '-'-- . '\ :., -:2!:':: ;, j:.t<"'''''w",.:w ":' ".- -"';.'i.--: :... . .......;.:.;-t-: ::.::::j .::':: .. .}: l . .. u::tjß:Y,vtFtWE.Mh ff ,!:;f : ] :' .s':i 'TII be home for dinn y career will be finished at five. " ::' * ii...W' "" "' II - -_ " __,,,- j 'F :;,,;; ,.'=",,",_: ':"u,;:; := : .. ' "',,' -., San Simeon-helped Hollywood feel better about itself. He had been a power in California before movies and would remain one, whatever happened to the industry. His empire was not built on celluloid. There was nothing flimsy about it. From California, Hearst carried on a regular-and usually warm-corre- spondence with his wife, though he could also be peremptory with her and the boys. "It is impossible to get Char- lie Chaplin's picture. That is a ridicu- lous request," he wrote Millicent, re- sponding to an apparendy innocuous suggestion that he send his sons a pho- tograph of the Little Tramp. "We will have to stop what amounts to an impo- sition." A recurring bone of contention seems to have been Millicent's living allowance, which she considered too low and he considered too high. (In ad- di tion to the Riverside Drive apart- ment, she had the run of a Gatsby- esque mansion in Sands Point, Long Island. ) In a letter that indicates how blind Hearst was to his own profligate ways, he wrote Millicent in 1930, "These . . young people are all as mad as March Hares on the money question and seem to think there is no limit to the bank- roll. . . . All work and no play may make Jim a dull boy, but no work and all play makes Jim all kinds of a jackass. I want you to get our youngsters together and tell them I am going to shut down on the money supply. . . . These nincom- poops are never satisfied and are being ruined by living far beyond their means d . " an mIne. During the boys' teen-age years, they stayed away from San Simeon. As young men, however, they made the trip themselves, in large part be- cause they were curious to meet Mar- ion. Although there were rumors that Marion and Millicent had met, Bill, Jr., was convinced that this never hap- pened. In his 1991 book "The Hearsts: Father and Son," he wrote, "Marion and my mother never had anything to do with each other. Mother was too dignified for that, and Pop would never have put her through such distress. Of course Marion came up in conversation at various times and places, but Mom usually refrained from comment. If she ..::; . r ji.. -::: : :, .:;..w ::....; ... : . N .. ': Î;' .-:===